Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Brownie Journey: World of Girls Overview

Our troop went on a Journey last year to discover the World of Girls. I will admit I was a little scared. It was the first Journey for our troop and this portion of the National Portfolio are still rather new to Girl Scout world... so, I knew my resources online would be limited. I asked other Leaders and no one had done this particular Journey, either. That's what I get for choosing the newest one, right? HA!

I read through the book... a few times... it helped me think about what to do but it also made me wonder what I had gotten myself into, because there is a lot of information in that book! So, I broke it down. The Leader's book does break it down to Sessions and some of the Sessions seemed a little short, so we even combined Sessions at times or pulled from a couple different things to make up our own. Yes, this is allowed! As long as you get from point A to B with the same outcome, you are okay. Girl Scout Promise! Plus, my philosophy is if the girls have fun and it keeps them in Girl Scouts...that is the true outcome you are trying to achieve. The leadership essentials will come... just keep them coming to meetings.

Now, I am relying on memory for these posts and it's been a year. But, I will start putting together what we did and how we did it and what the girls thought. I'm going to break it down by how we did it. It may not go "by the book", but hopefully you can pick up some tips and tricks and adjust to what YOUR girls want to do.

A few things I gathered before starting were:

a map (a large world map where you can actually read the countries... Barnes & Noble)

labels to keep track of where we went on our Journey

paper lunch bags (a bunch of them because we made paper bag albums for our passports)

resources for flags, foods, and information (which I will share... promise!)

I will give you a spoiler and tell you the girls LOVED this Journey and making connections with countries and learning about girls all over the world. I can look back and think about what I would have done differently or other things to incorporate in, but the end result was the girls had fun and it left them excited about the next Journey and about Girl Scouts. At the end of the year, I asked them what they liked the best about the year and unanimously they agreed the Journey was the best.

It's all in the way you present it. Don't present it as a LOT of work, rather present it with it's name..."We are going on a Journey! Each meeting will be a trip to someplace new. We're going to learn a lot, have a lot of fun, and find out all kinds of things about the girls around the world. There is a whole World of Girls out there!" It's also in the way you try to incorporate things in that they are interested in. Ask them what they want to know about each country and girl world you visit. My girls are foodies... so we learned a lot about food and farming and what grows where.

Our girls chose to address a need in their school. I asked the school counsellor what they needed the most, and she said it was school supplies for children who are transferring in during the school year or for children whose parents just can't afford the items on the list (it's about $50 each year, and we are not in an affluent community). So the girls decided they wanted to help, and they chose to do it by holding a bake sale. Each girl was asked to make 24 of something yummy and we had a "wrapping" party on the Sunday before the sale where we put everything in baggies or plastic wrap. Everything was 50 cents except for some really fancy cupcakes two girls brought, and those were $1. The girls raised $118 at their sale, which they used to buy school supplies that they donated to the school. They were formally recognized by the counsellor for their work, and they were sooooo proud. I can't believe how well they pulled together to plan all aspects of the project, from deciding what to sell and how much it should cost, to making signs and announcing the sale at school assembly. They worked so hard on it, and yet they loved it so much they want to do it again next year. :-)

What an awesome idea. With TAPs don't you have to present a way to make it sustainable. Did you do that, and if so how did you do that? I have been trying to figure out what to do with our TAP but it is difficult to pick something that will be carried forward for years to come.

You have literally been an answer to my prayers. I am a first year leader and convinced my mom to help. We were so lost. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You. I don't know what we would have done without this. Your ideas were like little seeds to get our ideas flowing. Thank you so much! You have help save a troop in Ohio.